


Armour

by AsheTarasovich (natalieashe), Boffin1710



Series: Moments of Life in the Shadows [27]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Emotions, Escape, Established Relationship, M/M, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 13:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11441895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/pseuds/AsheTarasovich, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/pseuds/Boffin1710
Summary: Agents and Quartermasters wear their roles like armour.  Stripping it away, emotionally and physically, requires them each to find their own space.





	Armour

**Alec...**   
  
This. Is. Bliss.   
  
If anyone else is on my floor of the hotel, they are quiet. No muted burble of TVs, no voices raised in anger, no music.  Nothing.   
  
Just a clean, silent hotel room all to myself for a few hours...   
  
Sometimes I need this escape. This time to switch off, calm down, let simmering things settle, before I allow my life back in.  What I do takes it's toll, and any double o who says otherwise is lying to you and themselves.   
  
The curtains are already drawn.  Two bottles of house red stand beside the chunky glass that is typical of hotel bathrooms.  I'll call for room service soon, but first...   
  
I peel off my clothes, stripping away my work.  They are in a decent state, considering.  Sandy coloured brick dust on the sleeve of my navy Huntsman.  A stain of indeterminate origin on the left knee.     
  
The shoes though... fuck, the shoes are wrecked.  Hand-stitched leather is not designed to survive such ill-treatment.  I toss them into the tiny waste bin. It is too small to take the formerly exquisite size tens and falls onto its side.   
  
"Fuck!"   
  
I even startle myself with my curse, too loud in the silence.  The suit, the shoes.  They are more than just clothes, more than an outer shell.  I shed a layer of myself, leaving me tender and raw, every time I step away from a legend.   
  
Naked, I stretch. Catch a glimpse of myself in the matt-black TV screen.  A ghost, a shadow.  Exactly what I need to be.  But not now.   
  
I send a text to a familiar number.  Silence the mobile.  Stretch out on pristine cool cotton sheets and close my eyes.  And wait...   
  
The next few hours are all about me.

  
  


**Q….**   
  


His mission has finally ended and I can walk out the door for some much needed ‘away from there’ time.   The entire last two weeks have been utter chaos.  Three double o missions overlapping.  Not to mention all the junior field agents that are out.  Other handlers work them, but I am the one who surprises them.  In the middle of all of that also was the three days that our firewalls were pounded and having to fight off an intrusion attack, one after another. 

I need some quiet away from the constant hum of monitors and cooling fans.

Yet, when I am finally back at the flat I find it utterly impossible to settle.  

“Fuck….” I have paced from one end of the flat to the other trying to breathe, relax, let it all go. 

The walls of the flat are closing in just as the basement walls of MI6 at times become virtual prison walls.  No hope of a glimpse of the outside world. 

Tonight is one of those nights that no matter how desperately I need sleep, I cannot manage to turn things off.  The walls of the flat threaten to consume me alive and I need to escape out into the open spaces of the city.  

The river calls to me to come watch its silent flow.

To wander its paths.

To bathe myself in the sights, sounds, and lights of the city. 

Jeans.

Hoodie.

Trainers.

Mobile.

A far stretch and so out of the norm from the Quartermaster outer armour I wear daily to work. 

And yes, of course, I will arm myself.  

It may be an ignorant move for me to roam the city alone at night by myself…

but I’m not that ignorant.

 


End file.
